Gregory VII

Timeline

1. 1015–1046Rome · LazioHildebrand was born in Sovana, Tuscany, and in his youth went to the monastery of Santa Maria on the Aventine Hill in Rome for theological education, absorbing Cluniac reformist ideas. Deeply troubled by simony and secularization in the church, he resolved to pursue reform, laying the intellectual and theological foundation for his later role as a key papal adviser.
2. 1046–1073Rome · LazioHildebrand successively served Leo IX, Nicholas II, Alexander II, and other popes, promoting the 1059 papal election decree (election of the pope by the College of Cardinals, excluding interference by secular rulers) and gradually accumulating great influence. As archdeacon he became the de facto decision-making core of the Curia, hailed as the behind-the-scenes operator of the Gregorian Reform movement, establishing deep reformist roots in the Curia.
3. 1073–1085Rome · LazioElected pope in April 1073 amid popular acclaim, he issued the 27 articles of the Dictatus Papae in 1075, declaring papal authority supreme over all secular power and forbidding lay investiture. In 1076 he broke with Henry IV at the Synod of Worms and excommunicated him. In 1077 Henry IV stood barefoot in the snow at the castle of Canossa in Tuscany for three days of penance, and Gregory VII was forced to lift the excommunication, an episode known as the 'Humiliation of Canossa.' He excommunicated Henry IV again in 1080. In 1084 Henry IV captured Rome and installed the antipope Clement III; Gregory VII withdrew to Salerno, where he died in exile on May 25, 1085, saying on his deathbed: 'I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.'